


Lost Women

by Akallabeth



Series: Les Misérables Fix Fic Game [2]
Category: Les Misérables (TV 2018), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Don’t copy to another site, F/F, F/M, Fix Fic, Focus on relationships between women, Gen, women
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-11 02:15:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17437988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akallabeth/pseuds/Akallabeth
Summary: What Mademoiselle Baptistine, Aunt Gillenormand, Dahlia, and Marguerite were doing instead of appearing in the new miniseries. Additionally featuring: La Magnon, Mlle Miss, Mere Plutarch, and possibly others.





	1. Mademoiselle Baptistine

Mademoiselle Baptistine's head began to ache while she dressed for dinner. Her only dinner dress was nearly ten years out of date, but she donned it every evening just the same. With all the need in the world--in the diocese, in their own town--she could not justify spending money on a new gown when she had a perfectly serviceable one. So, the puce-colored silk dress of 1806 was carefully washed, carefully worn, carefully mended, and made to serve another year. 

She could have eaten her evening meal in the serviceable wool and cotton dresses she wore during the day, but Baptistine Myriel was a lady, and would wear her wig and her silk to dinner. A lifetime of training does not break easily; to dine in one's finest attire, at a neatly set table, and with a friendly disposition is to respect one's company. It is just such care and kindness that makes a fine meal of even the most modest repast. 

If she were to admit it to herself, the small ceremony of dressing as well as she could and eating a meal served with real plate reminded her of her youth, and this comfort helped her to cheerfully bear the other deprivations of her life.

Even saints are human. 

But let it be admitted that she already owned gown and wig, and wearing them hurt no one.

Tonight, though, it appeared as though the wig may be hurting her, and so she set about removing the pins. But the pain did not abate--instead, it set in somewhat near her left eye, and the candle on her dressing table seemed to flash.

Mademoiselle Baptistine did not often get these headaches, but when they came, they arrived in a tempest of pain and dizziness, with each noise or light amplified to excruciating. The only thing for it was darkness and quiet. And so, when Madame Magloire had set the table--but found no one with whom to express her concerns about dangerous convicts and bolting the door--she ventured upstairs to find her mistress's candle extinguished, her wig askew on its stand. Madame Magloire recognized this break with habit for what it was, then quietly shut the door, and went downstairs to reset the table for one.

That _man_ arrived just after the bishop sat down to dine, resulting in Madame Magloire adjusting the place settings for a third time. She flinched every time the stranger raised his voice--how her poor lady must be suffering from the noise!--but the bishop said nothing of his sister. As for Madame Magloire, she dared not contradict her master, let alone tell the criminal that there was an invalid lady in the house. So much the better if he should believe each room filled with stout seminarians well and able to defend their bishop, and not merely two old and defenseless women.

In the morning, Mademoiselle Baptistine felt well enough to take a bowl of arrowroot. Madame Magloire served it with a small wooden spoon out of the kitchen. She could not bear to distress her mistress with news that the house had been robbed. Or, later, with the news that certain pieces of movable property from within the house had been _gifted_.

The house, however, had it's own way of doing so. There was, at this time, a sort of hollow tube in the wall of Mademoiselle's bedroom which connected to the dining parlor on the floor below. This house, having formerly served as a hospital, was fitted with such a device to allow communication between the lower and upper floors. Though the walls of that venerable house have long since been tumbled, a similar design may be seen at the hospital of the old Abbey of H---, in the village of M---, and which in the present day houses a workshop of basket-makers. 

It was this speaking tube which conveyed to Mademoiselle Baptistine not only the particulars of last night's dinner conversation between her brother, the bishop, and his guest, the convict Jean Valjean, but which also revealed the crime which had been committed, and the greater crime which had been averted.

In the middle of the afternoon, Madame Magloire came to see if her mistress required anything, and to inquire whether dinner should be served for one or for two. 

"I am quite recovered, and will dine with my brother", Mademoiselle announced. Her face still looked haggard with poor rest, but she was not squinting at the light or grimacing in pain, which Madame Magloire took as good signs. At the same time, the gloomy necessity of acquainting her mistress with certain matters awaited. Madame Magloire took a deep breath, preparing herself to relate the sordid affair--for, indeed, they were lucky to not have been murdered in their beds!--but had no chance. Mademoiselle cut her off with a serene smile. "If you would be so good, Madame Magloire, to take the blue purse from the box on my dressing table"--this, indeed, was these repository for the small fund which was meant someday to furnish the parlor in mahogany, but, today, always seemed to find its way into alms or small treats for the table when the bishop entertained guests--"and buy of M. Mouton six pewter forks and six bone-handled knives."


	2. Mademoiselle Gillenormand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why Aunt Gillenormand is not to be found in her father's house.

The two Mademoiselle Gillenormands were very little alike. The one harbored etheral dreams, the other terrestrial ones; one recalled the Terror and came of age in the Republic, the other played through the Terror and came of age with the Empire. The two daughters had not even a mother in common. 

The sisters shared one goal: to be free of their father's house. And, though the elder would not admit it for many years--even to herself--they shared a second: to find love.

The younger Mademoiselle Gillenormand accomplished both of these feats in the conventional way: she married a courageous officer, set up house with him, and soon added a child to the family, that even more love might flourish therein.

The elder Mademoiselle Gillenormand, having little particular interest in husbands as men, had set her designs on a stupid one: on a career as wife and hostess rather than a vocation as loving spouse. 

And yet, no opportunity found her, nor she it.

With a sister ten years her junior, the inexorable flow of time became only more clear. When her sister marries at 23, the woman of 33 casts off even the faintest hope of matrimony. When the sister produces a child at 26, the maiden of 36 sees her own future come into focus as the spinster aunt.

Such might have been Mademoiselle Gillenormand's fate. Her life poised before her: housekeeper and companion to an elderly father, then, when no longer needed, ever after the unwilling pensioner of her sister and her sister's children. The convent reared its face on her right, eternal dependence and domestic drudgery on the the left. Her live over without ever having begun. No home of which she would ever be the true mistress, misunderstood, unloved, mourned only for whatever legacy she might bequeath. 

For Mademoiselle Gillenormand had a legacy. Her father's money disappeared into the dealings of his second wife--a well-meaning, but not exceptionally clever woman trying to fill a role for which she had no training or inclination--but his first wife had left a substantial estate to her only child. Shrewd beyond anyone's expectations of her gender or class, the first Madame Gillenormand invested in businesses, speculated in land, and even loaned moderate sums to persons likely to eventually repay her. At the time of her death, she returned her husband's fortune to him at a 30% increase over 15 years of marriage. For her daughter, madame's own handsome dowry had become an inheritance of over 100,000 francs.

In our decadent and corrupt age, money is power. For those who so desire it to be.

For Mademoiselle Gillenormand, whose own material ambitions had been worn and tempered by time and disappointment, her money became a small villa in Poitou. She no longer imagined a glittering society career and large house in the Paris--no grand receptions and accomplished guests and fine carriage with a coat of arms at the door.

Instead, she found a comfortable house in the country. No state rooms, but a cosy parlor where she wrote out her cautionary essays on proper behavior. No formal garden, but a modest orchard and plot of herbs which furnished kitchen and still room. No grand parties of guests, but Elise (Mlle Vaubois to the outside world) making preserves in the kitchen, and sharing their bed at night.

They had a man who pruned the orchard trees--that Elise might make her plum jam and apple butter and cherry cordials--and a maid who swept the house and lit the fire. The laundry went out to a widowed neighbor who needed the work, and occasionally they'd take on a girl to help in the kitchen. Each seemed to last a season or year before offers of higher wages in grander houses swept her away, but such was all the help they required. And, if most of these country maids eventually made their careers as confectioners, cooks, or stillroom maids, the world is a little sweeter for the two old women who gave them a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aunt G's given name has been forgotten. I've had her take up Lila as a chosen name for her new life away from Paris. She puts her prudery and pruient imagination to good use, writing gothic short stories under the name "Lila G." She thinks they're simply parables on properly modest behavior and the dire consequences of Men! Seeing! Your! Ankles!, but with basically no editing they get published as cutting-edge Romantic horror fiction.
> 
> I apologize for any math errors. Aunt G was supposed to be 57 in 1832, putting her birthdate c. 1775 and her sister's around 1785. The Pontmercies married some time between 1804 and 1811; I chose 1808 as a likely "between wars" date for the Empire--4th and 5th Coallition wars, to be precise. The Empire had a frigging ton of wars. Mme P died in 1815; I assume in the latter half of the year, as her husband's comment at Waterloo implied she was still living as of that June. At any rate, it was a bad year for Georges (all of them, really).


End file.
